1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic card, and especially to an enhanced electronic card structure with a high strength and capable of transferring data at a high speed and providing diversified functions.
2. Description of Related Art
With advances in electronic technology, various electronic devices, such as notebook computers, hand-held computers, PDAs (personal digital assistants), are getting smaller in size. These small-sized electronic devices provide convenience to the user due to their portability and data processing capability. However, because of the small size, such an electronic device generally has only basic processing circuitry. For other circuit modules, such as add-on memory, modem, network card, etc., have to be provided to the electronic device by inserting a corresponding electronic card therein. This electronic card can also be inserted into a personal computer for enabling data communications or increasing data storage space.
Because the dimension of the integrated circuit embedded in the aforementioned electronic card is miniaturized, the electronic card scale can be made small. However, on such a small-sized electronic card, the number of contact points to be electrically contacted with the terminals of a corresponding slot is hence limited. Besides, for making the contact points of the electronic card accurately and securely contact- with the corresponding slot terminals, the contact points are typically arranged at a front edge of the electronic card. As shown in FIG. 1, a SD memory card has a size of 24xc3x9732xc3x972.1 mm3, and there are only 9 contact points 11 arranged on the front edge at the top surface of the card.
The above SD memory card has contact points 11 on the front edge of the card surface for providing the connections of power, data, address and control between the electronic card and a host device. However, providing connections for power, data, address and control with only 9 points 11 is inadequate, and thus the performance the card is restricted. For examples, the data transmission rate is low due to the insufficient number of data lines, or the memory space capable of being addresses is too small due to the inadequate number of address lines.
Furthermore, in order to prevent the forementioned closely arranged contact points from being accidentally touched, the front portion of the upper lid 12 of the SD memory card has multiple ribs 13 to separate every contact point 11 from each other. However, due to the small scale of the electronic card, the rib 13 is therefore subjected to be slim enough, which results in that the rib 13 is likely deformed or broken. In addition, if the number of contact points 11 is increased, the size of the rib 13 must be even smaller, and this will definitely weaken the strength of the rib 13. Therefore, it is desirable for the above conventional electronic card to be improved so as to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.
The object of the present invention is to provide an enhanced electronic card structure with a high strength and capable of transferring data at a high speed and providing diversified functions
To achieve the subject, the enhanced electronic card structure in accordance with the present invention includes: a circuit board having a surface, and multiple front and rear contact points arranged at a front edge of the surface, wherein any one of the rear contact points is arranged at the back of a front contact point, and at least one fixing hole is defined between any two adjacent front contact points; a top cover board arranged on top of the circuit board, and having a front edge defined therein multiple gaps, each gap being aligned with one front contact point and corresponding rear contact point, any two adjacent gaps being separated by a rib, each rib having a bottom face extended thereform at least one fixing tip which is aligned with the at least one fixing hole; and a bottom cover board arranged below the circuit board, and having a surface arranged thereon multiple fixing joints, each fixing joint being aligned with one fixing tip at the bottom of the rib of the top cover board, so as to make the fixing tip pass through the corresponding fixing hole to be fixed to the corresponding fixing joint.